Electric car chargers could be switched off remotely at peak times
Emily Gosden, Energy Editor
July 18 2017, 12:01am, The Times
Owners would be encouraged to charge their cars at off-peak times or on days when there is plenty of renewable energy available
Electric car chargers could be switched off remotely or turned down by energy companies if owners refuse to use them at off-peak times.
UK Power Networks, which delivers electricity to 18 million people in London, the southeast and the east of England, is calling for the right to remotely control vehicle charging as a “last resort” to prevent power cuts.
Forecasts suggest that electric vehicles could increase peak demand far beyond the level that existing power stations can generate and cable networks can transmit.
To tackle the problem the industry and government plan to encourage “smart charging”, whereby households agree to allow their vehicles to charge automatically at off-peak times when the system can cope.
Suleman Alli, director of safety and strategy at UK Power Networks, said he hoped that pricing tariffs would persuade people to charge cars at off-peak times only, but that the company needed the powers to intervene if they did not. “One of our key roles is to keep the lights on,” he said. “If we start to see uncoordinated or uncontrolled charging, that may jeopardise the network security and safety. We need to be able to step in and manage it.”
Last week National Grid estimated that unmanaged electric car charging could add 18 gigawatts to peak demand by 2050, equivalent to the power output of six big new nuclear plants similar to Hinkley Point C. Smart charging could reduce this extra demand to six gigawatts, it said.
“In the future we could face a position where everyone comes home and starts charging at the same time,” Mr Alli said. “We would need to invest in improving the network to be able to handle that additional load. The more money we spend, that effectively translates to higher bills.”
He expects “time-of-use” tariffs that vary prices with demand to become the norm. “If people feel that they want to charge whenever they want, there’s a cost associated with that and the people that use the network in that way should pay their fair share of that cost,” he said.
